I have three Nassaruis snails and i dont have sand i use crushed coral will these be ok ?
b fine may want to icrease your cleanup crew eventually
aye plan on it didnt want to shock the system by loading it up real fast .All ears for a number on what i need cleaner crew wise for a 110 tank. My blue legs are being lazy and grouping all in one spot. have 15 of those and 3 red scarlets
Why crushed coral?
if it was me i would use different large varioty of snails, small counch, few emerald crabs, i am not a big fan of alot of hermits. but each his own. thier is no real number to go by. just pick what works for your situation.
Nassarius Vibex are carnivorous and pretty much eat only the meaty fare you add to the tank, they are detrivours to the extent they will eat meaty carrion waste. if algae is the only food in the tank they will starve.
DO NOT follow the recommendation off of someone who makes a living off from selling clean up crews. If you find an animal that eats an algae you are having a problem with you may be tempted to buy 20 more to clean it all up faster. Problem is once your tank starts to mature and the nutrient level goes down the amount of algae(and food source for the clean up crew) will disappear and you may be left with animals starving to death.(plus wasted money) In my opinion 99% of reefers in the hobby stock their tanks too heavy with inverts when they first start off in the hobby and retailers make a pretty $ off of these creatures.
Doubt they will starve. Perhaps in a nano with no fish over a period of months, but in a tank with fish it will be fine. Even if the fish aren’t fed and there is no waste the fish will die from starvation and well there is your food. Risk of starvation I think is pretty low.
I went with the crushed because when i got the tank from fishmans that what they used and was told when cleaning you dont lose all that much. I started adding Reef advantage calcium twice week to help get my coraline algae going.
I agree i dont want to overload on hermits. I read that SEA Hares rock for doing away with hair algae.
Lol i feel like a noob .You guys rock … love the feed back i am getting.
once the hare eats the hair, he can toxify yr tank. get a rodi and stop making the ha in the first place.
I would like you to slowly remove the crushed coral and replace with either a fine sand or a argornite based sand. the crushed coral won’t add alot to your tank and trap one heck alot of debis, which will dive nitrates. from reading other threads, you have a big tank . snails are the way I would go, you don’t need alot of crabs.
The crushed coral is not the problem, the gaps in between the particles is. If you want to keep your crushed coral, you will have to vacuum it regularly. Also, in my experience, Nassarius snails are unable to dig into the crushed coral as they do in sand and will not do well. Welcome to the boards!
Joe
if its just crushed coral i would pull 1/2 of it out and add sand. thats what i did with mine. still have some larger pieces of crushed coral to remove and add sand little by little
gets vacummed bi weekly. and your right there not doing good …shakes fist at CAptnemos
Crushed coral stinks and in my opinion anything that requires maintenance twice a week will likely eventually be a big problem. None of us no matter how into this or how devoted can do anything besides dropping in food that regularly. In the middle of the summer you’ll get tired of it and let it go and you’ll get hair algae all over again. I agree, remove the crushed coral asap.
Sorry not weekly but once every two weeks. Only thing i noticed i dont like about the 110g i that its 4 ft tall i have monkey arms but dam that justa tad to long for me.
With a finer sand bed, a decent number of Nassarius snails, and a hand full of fighting conchs you may never need to vac out your sand bed again. Fish that move the sand bed may help as well, but some of them don’t do to well in captivity so as always research the animals before you purchase. That would be my advice. That or bare bottom.
i use fine sand and have no nassarius snails. i don’t think they are necessary at all. i disagree that you need a cleanup crew. i never vacuum my sand bed.
here’s something i wrote a while ago, and i still believe it to be true.
http://renegadereefers.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1427
You make some interesting and valid points. I will say that some of the most fascinating creatures in a reef tank are the snails and hermits and other “cleanup crew.” I would also agree that their consumption of leftover foods and algae does add to the nutrients in the water column. However, I believe that this enables a protein skimmer or mechanical filter to remove the nutrients from the water.
I also agree that some of the creatures advertised will slowly starve in most tanks. Each hobbiest should examine his or her own tank and make selections based on their specific situation, not choose a “jumbo starter pack” based strictly on tank size in gallons. Additionally, I think the old “one hermit per gallon” advice was when the micro-sized blue legged hermits were all the rage.
Just my thoughts,
Joe